


Illimitable

by KrisseyCrystal (IceCreAMS)



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [21]
Category: A Saga of Light and Dark - T. J. Chamberlain
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Angst, Bad Things Happen Bingo, Communication Suddenly Cut-Off, Gen, Outer Space, Protective Siblings, Science Fiction, Siblings, well ryes is more like mentioned so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:08:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24546658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IceCreAMS/pseuds/KrisseyCrystal
Summary: “You okay, squirt?” Nerissa presses.“Y-yeah. I just thought I saw something.”Nerissa’s eyes snap to the radars and the blip-less maps of the asteroid’s surface across the green screens on the left wall. There’s only one cool, blue dot that is Poseidon. “Saw what? There’s still no other signs of life here on our, uh…” She checks the note Ryes had scribbled in his excitement on finding an unclaimed asteroid. “X-11-07. So you’re good.” Safe, she means and knows Poseidon understands.
Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1648339
Comments: 4
Kudos: 3
Collections: Bad Things Happen Bingo





	Illimitable

**Author's Note:**

  * For [silver_fish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silver_fish/gifts).



Space is a vast blanket of multi-colored nebulas and galaxies swathed in an endless black embrace. Pockets of suns and stars glitter, rich and tempting in Nerissa’s eyes as she peers up at the expanse, cheek resting against her folded fingers. It seems as if in their tiny little scavenger ship, they, too, are enfolded in it: swallowed up by the greatness of infinity.

Nerissa’s kind of in love with that.

“Hey, Issa?” 

With a soft exhale and a lazy, long stretch, Nerissa leans over and presses on the glowing comm button at her right. “How’s it goin’, squirt?”

“I told you not to call me that.”

“And I said I’ll stop calling you that the day you finally hit that growth spurt.” Nerissa grins. “So what, did you need something?”

“Just wondering if Ryes is back yet?”

Nerissa sighs. The button  _ clicks  _ again under her finger. “Negatory, squirt. Sorry.” Then, just as fast, an idea pops into her head. She straightens, slipping her crossed feet down from the wide dashboard. “What, are you getting tired? Wanna switch?”

“Get lost, Issa. I didn’t say  _ that _ .”

Nerissa drops her fist against the dashboard’s rounded steel edge. “Damn it.”

Poseidon’s laugh on the other end of the comm earns her an extra eye roll. He’s holding open the comm so she can hear him on purpose.

“Who’s the one who drew the short straw, again?”

“I don’t care. I want to see the geodites!”

“There’s not really much to see out here, Issa. You’d be disappointed. I don’t even think I’m going to be able to bring back a full crate. All the geodites I can find aren’t worth very much. They’ve all got common cores.”

“I don’t  _ care. _ ” Nerissa drops her head against the dashboard and groans. “It’d be better than being cooped up on this damn ship waiting for Ryes to get back from the nearest outpost.” 

“Haha. That’s your--uh.”

Nerissa waits for a second, and then two, and then leans forward again.  _ Click.  _ “My what?” 

Poseidon doesn’t answer.

_ Click.  _ “You okay, squirt?” Nerissa presses.

“Y-yeah. I just thought I saw something.”

Nerissa’s eyes snap to the radars and the blip-less maps of the asteroid’s surface across the green screens on the left wall. There’s only one cool, blue dot that is Poseidon. “Saw what? There’s still no other signs of life here on our, uh…” She checks the note Ryes had scribbled in his excitement on finding an unclaimed asteroid. “X-11-07. So you’re good.”  _ Safe,  _ she means and knows Poseidon understands. “Gettin’ hungry? Wanna head back?”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

When he doesn’t say anything more, Nerissa gentles her tone. “It’s okay, squirt. When you get here, you can eat some of those nutrition bars you like so much, break a few teeth, and then get back to checkin’ out the geodite deposit. I promise I won’t steal your thunder by switchin’ out with you.”

“I like that they’re crunchy.”

“Those nutrition bars are fuckin’ rocks.” Nerissa tries not to smile. 

“You just say that because your teeth are weak.” Poseidon rises to the bait like he always does. “Natural selection is coming for you, Issa.”

“Oh yeah? Consider me terrifi--”

Nerissa cuts herself off the instant Poseidon screams her name.

Her knee bangs against the underside of the dashboard on her way to her feet. The tall coffee mug she had been drinking lazily from bumps to the floor, spilling everywhere. Ryes’ note flutters slowly into the coffee, soaking from the center of itself and spreading outward.

“Poseidon?!” Nerissa’s fingers burn white, jammed as hard as they can be into the comm button. “Poseidon, answer me!”

“I--” Poseidon’s voice, panting and shaking, is still an immense relief to hear. “--Issa, I think the scanners are wrong. There’s definitely something--someone--out here!”

“What makes you say--” Nerissa doesn’t even let herself finish. She knows Ryes would have her head if she left the ship abandoned, but she can’t--she couldn’t--she can’t  _ stand here _ if Poseidon’s in danger. Surely their mentor would understand that. “--no. Hold that thought. I’m on my way. How far away from the deposit are you?”

Nerissa runs to the side wall for her dangling suit.

“No! Just let me come back to the ship! I’m on my way!”

_ Of course. Of fucking course he’d say that.  _ Nerissa runs a trembling hand through her hair, pulling it up and out from under the back before she taps the shoulder sensors and the suit squeezes tight to her form, vacuuming shut around her. “You’re out of your fucking mind if you think I’m just going to sit here while you’re out there with--” Nerissa’s eyes dart to the screens still blank and blipless safe for Posiedon’s figure, making a beeline for the ship. “--whatever the hell it is that our scanners aren’t picking up.”

“I think--” Poseidon’s breath fades in and out, heavy and cloudy over the line as he runs. Nerissa listens to it as she suits up. “--I think it’s a person. Human. Maybe otherwise; I don’t know. But…Issa…I get the feeling--”

Nerissa’s helmet clicks into place, locking onto the neck of her suit. There’s a sigh of decompressed air, and then a hub of information lights up around her vision. She hurries to the door. Her fist slams into the button to unlock the decontamination chamber as she switches her comm link to hands-free. “Get the feeling of what, squirt?” she urges the silence to speak, to answer her. “What’s going on? Poseidon!”

There’s a crackle on the other end. Static. Then, oddly distorted speech: “I think there’s more than one!”

When the ship door finally opens, the landing steps don’t even finish extending to the lifeless grey dirt before Nerissa jumps out over them.

Gravity is strange on X-11-07. 

Nerissa swears at the slowness of it: the exact contrast to the fierce rabbit’s foot patter of her heart against her ribcage. When her boots hit the ground, she launches herself back up immediately with more force than she intended and  _ flies.  _ The ground passes quickly under her, dips and odd, holey stalactites poking up out of the earth, only to zip by harmlessly out of reach. 

Damn. That’s actually kind of cool. 

“Poseidon!” she calls; the shout of her own voice reverberates back at her inside the confines of her helmet. “I’m coming!”

The ground rushes up to meet her. Nerissa throws her feet out first and lands at an awkward angle. The grey asteroid rock crunches easily into dust, spraying up quickly and falling slowly. It obscures her vision for a second too long, a second Nerissa doesn’t have time to sit and wait through to see clearly. She jumps again.

_ “Poseidon!” _

“Issa! Issa, get back to the ship!”

“What?!”

“Get back here!  _ Now-- _ ”

There’s a harsh, buzzing click.

Then, nothing.

Nerissa lands hard. Dust clouds up, everywhere. Rising immediately. Falling slowly, drifting lazily. The substance is outside of her airtight suit; there are no cracks in her helmet for the asteroid dirt to seep into. And yet all the same, Nerissa does not think she can breathe.

“Poseidon?” she calls and she tries to open the comm link again. And again. And again. But there is nothing there. No buzz and quiet static like she should hear.

The line is dead.

_ “Poseidon!” _

The sound starts behind her, back the way she had come from. It’s odd, traveling through an atmosphere that morphs and dulls sound to an odd, distant roar, but she recognizes the tremble in the ground underneath her boots and the quiet thrum of their scavenger ship’s engines and she turns around as a pulse of wind scatters the cloud of dust into nothing.

Nerissa recognizes, in the distance, so far back from where she has launched herself, the body of their scavenger ship-- _ theirs-- _ as it rises into the sky, thrusters aimed at the ground. It pushes itself up, and up, and up.

_ That’s what Poseidon was trying to say. _

_ They have the ship. _

_ They have him. _

Nerissa pushes herself up again, launches herself. Something frantic makes her scream, gives voice to whatever is building inside her chest and needs to be set free. Needs to get to Poseidon, needs to not be stranded on an unclaimed asteroid in the middle of nowhere. No one knows X-11-07 even fucking exists yet.

When Ryes gets back--

\--will he come here? And find Nerissa? Or will he follow the signature of their scavenger ship and find it hijacked and Poseidon--

\--is Poseidon okay?

“STOP!” Nerissa screams at the top of her lungs as the ship, now at a safe altitude to turn and begin peeling away from the asteroid, slowly angles its nose towards the sky. The beautiful, kaleidoscopic spread of the universe is winged out above her, abyssal and amazing, and it betrays her.

The thrusters turn and push the ship up. With a bright flare and blast, the ship launches off.

And the void of space accepts it in its embrace.

Nerissa’s boots slowly hit the dirt. The burst of asteroid dust underneath her is smaller, gentler; it rises no further than her knees, juxtaposed entirely to the deep crater that has been punched into her chest. 

* * *

The first few minutes in the following silence is filled with the same thoughts on repeat, over and over again, tumbling through Nerissa’s head in a tight and panicky mess: “What do I do  _ now _ ?” and “I’m all alone. Oh god; I’m all alone. I’m stranded on an asteroid no one even knows exists yet and I’m alone,” and “What if Ryes never comes back?” and “I shouldn’t have fucking left the ship! I’m such an idiot! If I hadn’t left the ship, I could have…”

An hour passes.

Nerissa curls, pressing her forehead into her knees and hoping that if she puts her hands on the back of her helmet, she can trap and bottle her panic and focus it into something helpful.

Like taking inventory, for starters.

All of the suits Ryes had equipped their ship with are built to power through six hours before needing a recharge. If she doesn’t manage to do anything else  _ stupid  _ for the next five, then Nerissa knows she should be able to continue having access to a stable air supply and technology.

But that’s all she has. What about after those five hours? She doesn’t have a ship, now. No Poseidon. No idea who the fuck even--

\--no.

Nerissa’s head snaps up.

No. 

That’s…not entirely true.

Slowly, Nerissa pushes herself to her feet as her mind scrabbles to replay her and Poseidon’s conversation those precious few moments before he was taken. She assumes he was taken, anyway; that those pursuers chased him. He had been panting over the comm, undoubtedly pushing himself as fast as the gravity of this asteroid would allow. 

He had corrected himself, at one point. It wasn’t  _ something  _ chasing him; it was  _ someone. _

_ And if they were able to avoid our ship’s scanners, fooling us into thinking this asteroid was safe, and  they know how to fly a scavenger ship, then that means they’re probably sentient. Familiar with technology to some level. But…they used our ship to get off this hunk of rock. And we didn’t see any buildings or structures on the surface of this asteroid before we landed. Ryes said it was unclaimed. Which means…  _

“Please tell me they have some sort of bunker they left behind,” Nerissa murmurs. That would, at the very least, grant her access to some sort of means of survival. If it was human-friendly. But more importantly, it might give her an idea who--or what--had taken Poseidon and their ship.

_ And if I can find them…  _

There’s fire in that thought. Power. It stirs Nerissa into motion, pushes her to move, shoving aside the idle helplessness and despair at her loneliness to find hope: for as big and expansive as it is, the infinite measure of space is not enough to keep her from her little brother.

**Author's Note:**

> when taylo says "jump" i say "how high" alskdjflkadsf
> 
> okay jokes aside tho. taylo req’d a while ago “communication suddenly cut off” with their OC’s, Nerissa and Poseidon, an absolutely DYNAMIC sibling duo both of whom I adore, and I was helpless to say no. both chars come from their upcoming novel, Of Storm and Ash, so if you like these two, GO CHECK OUT TAYLO’S STUFF MAN it’s super good
> 
> also i got to toy with a sci-fi au i’ve been itching to do for a while so y’kno. win-win. thanks for reading!


End file.
